The Story of God Read online

  But dammit … it didn’t quite work out the way God had planned. Or—it did, naturally, it always did. But sometimes his perfect plan—well, it didn’t make perfect sense to him.

  “Do I not want my plan to work out?” he would briefly wonder, before disregarding that thought. “Of course I want it to work out, but I work in mysterious ways!” That always made God feel better.

  Still, it was peculiar. The one man who God had handpicked to survive, the one good man on earth, Noah? Well, he turned out to be, to put it bluntly, a drunken asshole. Sure, he was obedient, he never talked back once, he did exactly as he was told. “Is that the only reason I liked him?” God later wondered. “No. I also liked that he grilled meat for me as soon as he got off the ark.” (Gen. 8:20–21) God liked that so much, in fact, that he promised never to kill everyone on earth again (Gen. 8:21), which was a lot to promise, but damn that grilled meat smelled so good. “In case I forget this promise, Noah,” God had announced, “I will use rainbows as a reminder to myself.” (Gen. 9:13) God dug rainbows. He hadn’t “planned” them exactly, they were more a by-product of rain and sunshine—but they were so pretty that they occasionally mesmerized him.

  For a moment, sniffing that grilled meat, God considered softening his approach to the humans, dealing with them mainly through rainbows and pleasant breezes and falling stars. “I don’t have to be so angry all the time. I can be gentle with them.” Men were not to be harmed, God announced (Gen. 9:6)—feeling a little weird saying that, given that he’d just killed all of mankind, but still—it was that kind of moment.

  But as soon as the barbecue was over, what did Noah do? He got so drunk that he fell down, which caused his robes to fly up, which then revealed his penis and balls! (Gen. 9:21) That was bad enough—if there was one thing God could no longer abide, it was having to see that stuff, especially on a guy who was six hundred years old! That part of the body simply does not age well at all, God thought. But it got worse. When Noah’s son Ham accidentally walked in and saw his father laying there, what did this belligerent old jackass Noah do? He came to and started yelling at Ham, and not just, “How dare you look at my penis?!” (which would have been acceptable to God because looking at penises was bad). No, it went way beyond that—the old man shouted that Ham’s unborn son would be a slave. (Gen. 9:25) Which was crazy. Ham inadvertently walked in and saw his father’s penis and now his unborn son was going to be enslaved for it? God thought about scolding Noah for getting so drunk that he fell down. “Don’t drink so much, Noah,” he considered saying. “Or if you do, wear undergarments.”

  But he didn’t, because … well, he’d already stated that Noah was a good man (Gen. 6:9) and how would it look if he turned on him now? “He wasn’t actually a good man, I was wrong.” God couldn’t say that. First of all, he wasn’t wrong. Even if his plans sometimes didn’t make sense to him, they were still perfect. He knew that. No, he would stick with Noah. So what if the only words God ever heard him speak were drunken, belligerent nonsense? Nakedness was a shameful, disgraceful thing. True, Ham had not “meant” to see his father naked, it was probably the last thing he wanted to see—probably, but not definitely. After all, homosexuality had been rampant in the world God had just inundated with water. Maybe Ham was a secret, incestuous homosexual? Could he prove he wasn’t?

  In time it became crystal clear to God: Ham’s son deserved slavery.

  Chapter Six

  But things just kept going wrong. No matter what God did, the same problems kept coming up. Later, he would wonder whether using Noah-the-drunken-asshole to spearhead the re-population of the world had been a mistake. Maybe he should have just drowned everyone and walked away from the whole thing. He could always look for life elsewhere in the universe and try to work with it. These humans were impossible creatures.

  Before long, pretty much everyone on earth congregated in one place. (Gen. 11:2) They all wanted to work together, to build a great city with a tower at the center of it. God did not like this one bit. He found himself speaking aloud: “Let us go down and confound their speech so they cannot understand each other.” (Gen. 11:7) Once again, he stopped. Why did he keep saying “us?” There was no us, there was only him. God found these slips of the tongue extremely disconcerting. Why did they keep happening? “Maybe I was talking to my angels,” God decided. Yes, that was it, he was talking to his angels.

  But there was another question: Why didn’t God want the humans to join together and build a great city? What was wrong with that? Why did he want to split them all up and make them turn on each other? It took him a minute to understand—but then he suddenly did. “Oh,” he exclaimed, “of course. It’s because I don’t like most humans.” (God had actually begun to think that the new tribe he had created to give Cain a wife had been rushed and was a bit shoddy: “Not my best work.”) “In fact,” God continued, “I only like one tiny group of people that doesn’t even technically even exist yet, but soon will! In fact, I will basically only like one man for quite awhile. As for the rest of mankind, I don’t care what happens to them.” In his heart, God had to admit that the people he didn’t like … well, they didn’t seem to like him much either; in truth, they didn’t even seem to believe he existed. There was no way he was going to spend any of his valuable time and energy on those idiots. The one group of people he was going to like, the ones who would love and obey him—he didn’t want them mixed with the others. They would be special. They would be his chosen ones. He would protect them at times, punish them when necessary (which would be a lot, as it turns out!)

  As for the rest, the ones who didn’t love him? To sheol with them! To have created the entire universe and everything in it, including every single human being, and then to not even be believed in? That was infuriating to God. Worse, beyond disbelieving, these idiots had the gall to make up other, nonexistent gods! They chose to believe in fictional gods rather than him! “Baal,” for instance, was a made-up god that many humans (insanely) chose to believe in. “Baal” was supposedly a “fun, sexy” god—“unlike repressed, rigid real-God-me, I suppose!” God fumed.

  “Why are humans so weak and foolish and needy that they fall for false gods?” God demanded, before stopping himself, not liking that question very much. If Baal was real—which, to repeat, he wasn’t—but if he was, God felt that he would have been terribly vain, in love with his own supposed “desirability.” God loathed the very idea of Baal’s self-love, not to mention his obsession with sex. “Sex sex sex, that’s all this made-up prick cares about!” God muttered to himself.

  God found himself feeling very angry and upset about this; So much so, in fact, that a series of events, frankly, worrisome ones, occurred. God preferred not to think too much about this series of events, choosing to chalk them up to too much wine. “I was simply not myself,” God told himself.

  In his heart, however, this disturbing series of events would eat away at him for the next few thousand years.

  Chapter Seven

  Once again, God needed a man to get things going. He looked all over the one small area of the earth that was interesting to him. (Not only was the rest of the universe boring to God, but 98% of earth was too!) Finally, he found a man named Abram. (“Before long, I will add two letters to his name,” God thought to himself. “That’s how much I like him!”) God spoke to Abram, who then started to travel around, claiming the land that God told him to in the very words God suggested: “God, the creator of the universe, gave us this land, forever.” (Gen. 13:15) Astoundingly, some of the other tribes didn’t accept this. (“They don’t believe in me, why would they accept my words?” whispered that awful little critical voice in God’s head.)

  Abram, his wife, Sarah (who wasn’t so bad for a woman, God noted), and their slaves (God had zero problem with slavery, obviously) (Gen. 12:5) went to Egypt, where they tricked Pharaoh, which God got a kick out of. Pharaoh was the most powerful nonbeliever on earth, so toying with him was quite enjoyable. “I want to do a lot mo
re of that down the line,” he noted to himself.

  Abram also traveled with his nephew Lot, who had a bit of a weird, creepy quality to him, God had to admit. Which is presumably why, when they split up, Lot was drawn to basically the worst place on earth: Sodom. God had tried hard to make it clear to people that he despised homosexuality. It was unnatural, abhorrent. He honestly had no idea where it came from, this dark and hateful desire that so many men had to enjoy each other’s bodies. It was enough to give God momentary pause. “Did I want so many men to be homosexual, was that my plan? Why would it be when I hate homosexuality so much? And yet … it must be part of my plan because … how could it not be? But why would I devise a plan that infuriates me? Is it possible that I didn’t have a plan, or that I don’t even now? That I’m just sort of ‘improvising’ this whole thing, and not even very well?” Or, he continued, very deep in thought now, “Could I be so self-hating that I would create a reality that I would despise just to punish myself? What would I be punishing myself for?”

  He stopped, shook his mighty head. This was craziness. Of course he wasn’t “punishing” himself, he had no reason to do so. None. His mind drifted back to homosexuality and how much he loathed it. “I want to wipe it out forever,” he thought. “I don’t want any men who are obsessed with penises and balls to walk the earth ever again.”

  God had a plan. He would send two male angels to Sodom to check up on what he had heard was happening there. “Don’t I already know?” he silently asked himself. Yes, of course he knew, he always knew, he was God, he was all-knowing … but still, he wanted proof positive. God stopped for a moment, another question occurring to him: “If I am all-powerful, as I am, of course, then why do I need angels? Can’t I do these things myself?” The answer was quick and obvious in this case: God wanted to see what all those homosexuals in Sodom would do when he sent two good-looking male angels into their town. These angels were seriously handsome, “real homo-bait,” God thought to himself with satisfaction.

  “I will go down to earth with my two angels, whom I will then send into Sodom. Once they prove what I already know to be true, that the town is infested with homosexuals, I will annihilate both Sodom and Gomorrah! I won’t even warn them, nor will I need to see what’s happening in Gomorrah. I will simply burn them up. No one will survive!” He smiled to himself, thinking of all those damn penis-loving homosexuals being turned to ashes by his heavenly fire.

  A vaguely troubling thought popped into God’s mind: What about all the women in Sodom and Gomorrah? Why did they deserve to die? Was it their fault that they lived in towns where every male from 2 to 100 was a homosexual? Did they really deserve to be burned up for that? God thought this over for a moment, unhappy with the complication—then nodded decisively. “It is exactly what they deserve, they probably drove the men to homosexuality—they are probably homosexuals too!” God had never thought of female homosexuality before. In truth, he didn’t think of female anything that much. Women were hidden, strange, untrustworthy. He didn’t like them, quite frankly. But maybe they were homosexuals too—they probably were. They absolutely deserved to be burned up.

  The one straight man in Sodom was Lot, Abram’s nephew, who had settled there awhile back (Gen. 14:12) and made a family with his wife (what was her name? Oh well, it didn’t matter). He had two teenage daughters who were, even God had to admit, rather attractive. Lot’s wife was an unpleasant woman. God didn’t like her. “She’s probably a lesbian,” God muttered to himself, on-the-spot inventing a word to describe female homosexuals. Lot was constantly being gazed at by the men in town, but he didn’t seem to notice. He only seemed to have eyes for his own daughters. Which was fine, God thought. “He’s the only straight man in town, why shouldn’t his daughters have sex with him?” he asked himself.

  Chapter Eight

  God and his angels flew down to earth and started walking toward Sodom. “As long as we’re here,” he said to the angels, “let’s stop by and visit Abraham and Sarah.” (He had added the two letters to Abram’s name a while back.) It had been a while since God had paid Abraham a call. During their last visit, he had promised Abraham the land forever, but had attached a price tag: That piece of skin at the tip of the penis that looked so bad? God wanted it removed. (Gen. 17:10–11) “I killed two birds with one stone,” God thought to himself, pleased. “I made them sacrifice to me and also enhanced the look of the penis. Why hide that beautiful mushroom head?”

  God looked forward to seeing Abraham again. He didn’t even mind the idea of a visit with Sarah. (“I can’t believe I know her name,” God mused. “I never know women’s names!”) As he and the two angels approached Abraham’s tent, God felt a momentary twinge of discomfort: “I didn’t tell him we were coming, we’re just sort of showing up (Gen. 18:2), isn’t that kind of presumptuous?” Abraham, however, instantly put God at ease, bowing down and offering food and drink and foot-bathing. God wasn’t sure how to respond to Abraham’s generosity. “Thank you, that would be very nice”? “Yes, please”? God decided these were both weak. “Do it,” he said to Abraham. (Gen. 18:5) “Perfect,” he thought, “commanding and strong. Not rude in the least!”

  Then something incredible happened. For the first time ever, God actually tasted food. (Gen. 18:8) It was fantastic. As good as it had smelled, the reality of grilled veal was immeasurably better. God loved it. So did the angels. (Ten hours later, back in heaven, God would be forced to deal with the inevitable by-product of eating. He found defecating to be hideous. He vowed from then on never to use his own body, but rather to “possess” a “God-looking” man for his earthly visits. What if that man died? he briefly wondered. “Then I’ll find another one who looks like him or I will devise a kind of ‘man-suit’ to wear, something like a deep-sea-diving suit, now no more questions!”)

  God, Abraham, and the two angels sat under a tree, eating quietly. The situation began to feel slightly awkward. God had never been in a social setting before; sitting there between the two angels and Abraham, the silence became terribly unpleasant to him. “I have to say something,” he thought, and so he blurted out, “Sarah will soon give birth to a son named Isaac.” Instantly, he felt foolish. He’d already told Abraham that; he was repeating himself. (Gen. 17:19, Gen. 18:10) Was that all he could come up with?

  God heard laughter coming from the nearby tent. It was Sarah. She apparently found it funny that she would be having a baby at ninety years of age. God whipped around, glared at her. “Why is she laughing?” he demanded of Abraham. (He wasn’t going to ask her, obviously.) “Is anything too wondrous for the Lord?” he said, feeling very good about talking of himself in third person, vowing to speak of himself that way more often in the future. (Gen. 18:13–14)

  The woman—he’d already forgotten her name—was it Rachel?—quickly tried to lie to him: “I didn’t laugh.” But God knew she had. “Yes you did,” he said. (Gen. 18:15) He considered killing her at that moment, having one of his angels beat her to death, but then he remembered that he’d just said she was going to give birth to Isaac, so he decided not to.

  Also, quite honestly, God had bigger fish to fry. He and the angels were here to snuff out homosexuality, not have a strained picnic lunch (even if the veal was tremendous). When the angels moved on, Abraham walked with God, who decided to share the true purpose of his visit. Abraham asked God a brazen question: “Will you kill all the innocents too?” God stared at Abraham, taken aback. Abraham was questioning his wisdom? He thought of killing him too. Then he thought of telling him the truth: “No one is innocent, Abraham, you’re all bad, it’s just a matter of degree.”

  Finally, though, God decided to let it go. Someone had to become a great nation (Gen. 12:2), and it’s not like God had a lot of great options. So he just nodded. “Fine, if there are fifty innocents, I will spare the town,” he said. He knew there weren’t any innocents in Sodom, that this whole conversation was moot. What if there were forty-five, Abraham pressed him … or forty … thirty …
twenty … ten? (Gen. 18:28–32) Fine, fine, God said, knowing full well that he was going to destroy Sodom in any case and kill everyone there. But if it made Abraham feel better to think he was “saving” people, that was acceptable. Although, in truth, as the number kept dropping, God did start to feel a twinge of annoyance. “I’m going to play some sort of mean trick on Abraham in the near future,” he thought.

  God decided he’d had enough of being on earth. He flew back up to heaven (Gen. 18:23) and prepared to shoot fire down from the sky as soon as the moment was right. Which was going to be very soon, he could see, because down in Sodom everything was going exactly according to his plan. “Operation Eliminate Homosexuality is about to go down,” God whispered to himself with a thin smile.

  A mob of homosexuals appeared at Lot’s door and started yelling, “Bring those men out so we can have sex with them!” (Gen. 19:5) God’s jaw dropped—this was even worse than he’d expected! Not only were all the men in Sodom homosexuals, they were also rapists! They wanted to rape his angels (“exactly as I knew they would,” he admitted to himself). God saw young boys in the mob, some as young as four or five—was that a two year-old?!—and found that puzzling. (Gen. 19:4) Were boys born homosexual in Sodom, he briefly wondered? “No,” he instantly knew. “They chose it. It is an abomination and they will all die for it.”

  Lot tried to calm the mob by offering them his two virgin daughters for what would much later be crudely referred to as a “gangbang.” (Gen. 19:8) But of course that wasn’t going to work. “That mob of men wants penis and balls, not girls,” God muttered to himself. He was slightly, uncomfortably excited by what was happening. There was a part of him, he had to admit, that actually wanted to see the mob rape his male angels. “Oh, they would, they definitely would,” he whispered hoarsely, then shook his head slightly. “Focus, Lord,” he told himself. “Focus.”